Windows Phone posted the largest year-over-year increase among the top five smartphone platforms, and in the process reinforced its position as the number 3 smartphone operating system. Driving this result was Nokia, which released two new smartphones and grew its presence at multiple mobile operators. But beyond Nokia, Windows Phone remained a secondary option for other vendors, many of which have concentrated on Android. By comparison, Nokia accounted for 81.6% of all Windows Phone smartphone shipments during 2Q13.

Over the past 12 months, Windows Phone went from 3.1% market share to 3.7%. This means that while shipments of Windows Phone devices are growing, they're barely growing any faster than the industry as a whole. Still, it's crazy to see there's less than a 10 percentages points difference between Windows Phone and iOS.

Another potential problem is that Microsoft is effectively entirely dependent on Nokia. If Nokia falters, Windows Phone falters. Other vendors have essentially lost all interest in the platform, and as such, Microsoft has a a very strong impetus in keeping Nokia going. Still, I'm pretty sure that the Surface phone is ready to go at a moment's notice.

I think a smartphone is one which has a the capability of installing additional functionality the phone did not come with including a html browser with JavaScript and a secure shell client. With the media, there has been a shift every couple of years as to what a smartphone really defined as, but for me, the ability to get information beyond what is stored on the device and interact with it in a meaningful way coupled with the ability to adapt it to my needs, makes a phone smart. So I would include phones as far back as the treo.

For what its worth, Wikipedia describes the difference between a smartphone and a feature phone as one of price only.... Which makes little sense to me.

I think a smartphone is one which has a the capability of installing additional functionality the phone did not come with including a html browser with JavaScript

So you disqualify iPhone? (where you can't install browser engines other than Safari) And if not ...do we include Nokia Series40 "feature phones"? (they do have full Webkit browser, analogous to iOS Safari; and you can install j2me apps)

Back in the dark days, when WAP was cool and everyone was still playing Snake on their Nokia brick phone, a "Smartphone" had a nice simple definition of "A phone one can install third party application on."

Now it seems we need seven different strata's and multiple definitions of each just so that everyone can segment the market just so to make it look like they're "winning".

iOS, WP7/WP8, Asha, Android (including all those "white box" Chinese 'phones), and yes even Symbian: all smartphones. I don't know where "Feature phone" came from, what it's good for or even what the differentiator is supposed to be from a "Smartphone".

Back in the dark days, when WAP was cool and everyone was still playing Snake on their Nokia brick phone, a "Smartphone" had a nice simple definition of "A phone one can install third party application on."

What about j2me apps? (Nokia 3410 or 3510i, from "back in the dark days", would qualify...)